Beauty and Human Excellence: Getting the Job Done, Bird by Bird.

Concert of Birds by Frans Snyders, circa 1630s. Via Wikimedia.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The title of this book comes from a story of the author's brother who procrastinates all through the holidays on a project about various birds. The day before it is due, the lad sits at the table in despair - how is he to finish the project in time? His father, an author, sits down and says:

Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

As I sit here writing this, I am killing bird #12 on my to-do list and it is sound advice. Anne Lamott tells her story of the writing life in this beautiful book on love, death, birth, tragedy, drugs, and learning to love oneself while agonising over writing. Just ask anyone who has completed a PhD and they can tell you all about it. 

A friend once described the process as if you were rowing a boat. While you left the shore, others were around and you could call out for guidance, but soon, you were on the wide expanse of ocean and there was only you and your inner world to guide you. It seems like years, and often it is, until you reach the other shore, at times not knowing where you are going or where you will land. But one day, you reach the other shore. Or you don't and you are bitter and dejected forever. But that is a different story. 

This work reminded me of parts of the 2015 movie The End of the Tour, the story of David Lipsky's (of Rolling Stone magazine) 5-day interview with American author, David Foster Wallace, except Lamott mentions some of her "I am not so famous" stories. But the sentiment is there. The agony of writing, the endless work, the endless self-doubt and self-loathing. Lamott tells her story in a way that is helpful, rather than whiney. 

I often think of Charlotte Bronte and Mary Shelley and how their important works seemed not quite right, whereas Lamott hits the nail on the head with a somewhat gendered perspective that is simultaneously relevant to all. Elements of drugs, religion, friendship, and working with editors will be familiar to many. 

Yet Lamott's story is beautiful in the Stoic sense of beauty being related to human excellence. Even if the only thing the reader takes away from this work that one can achieve great things "bird by bird", it is a worthy lesson.

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Nietzsche and the Death of Socrates

Dionysus. Photo by Wouter Engler [CC BY-SA 4.0] from Wikimedia Commons

The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is not without significant trepidation that I approach this otherwise short work. The cover blurb tells me this is a "challenging work". Never truer words written. I was comfortable with the basic premise of Nietzsche's later work (written after 1888) - I understand this book represents the starting point for much of Nietzsche's later Apollonian (order) versus Dionysian (chaos) modes, but I was still not convinced about his critical position towards Socrates. How little I knew. 

There is too much in this work to make coherent comment, but suffice to say if one were to start reading Nietzsche, start with this one. Although it might not make so much sense unless one jumps in later when his ideas are more fully developed. Maybe. The thought that wouldn't leave me alone while reading this was Edward de Bono's idea about the Greek Gang of Three (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle). This really challenged my thinking. At the same time, I can't help but think of the Socrates who was also a soldier and was learning to play music just before he drank the hemlock, whereas Plato as far as I know didn't do anything else and was keen to ban certain types of music. 

So lumping them altogether al la Edward de Bono might be clever but I am not convinced. I am also not convinced that de Bono (and yes, I am a fan of de Bono) was all that original. This is one of the great wonders of reading the original texts. I did identify with the varieties of self-consciousness versus meta-cognition issues that consistently arise in the work. But I was unprepared for the onslaught of the Fans of Shakespeare that dominate my thoughts recently. To have Carlyle, Bloom, Nietzsche, and then before I have even written this, Oscar Wilde, tell me how important Shakespeare is, and I realise once more how far behind I am in my reading.

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Wright Brothers: Origins of my fascination with flight

Wright Flyer , first powered flight. By John T. Daniels [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a boy, I loved to read. Every so often at school, the Scholastic "book club" brochure would be sent home, and we were allowed to choose a few books from the catalogue. Two books I remember fondly, Robert Westall's (1975) The Machine Gunners and Quentin Reynolds' (1950) The Wright Brothers: Pioneers of American Aviation. 

McCullough had a lot of competition to win me over (when I think about it). McCullough's book was a gift from my sister. Just before my birthday, I (un)ashamedly posted my Book Depository wishlist on Facebook. Each of my sisters bought me some of the books from the list for my birthday, except the elder of my sisters. She remembered my fascination with Reynolds' book in the 1970s and bought McCullough's book for me instead.

And there it was, just like when I was a child, except the stories of the Wright's mother weren't as forthcoming, and my early education in things like "friction" and "wind resistance" and Orville winning the bicycle race, hunched over, and my burning desire to study "aeronautics" and become a fighter pilot crashed as a nostalgic tidal wave. We call them tsunamis these days, but not in the 70s. I couldn't put McCullough's book down, to the point of staying up far too late to finish it before I left some four hours later to fly to Shanghai. Not as a pilot, regrettably, but that is another, longer story.

I found McCullough's style much like Simon Winchester, but with an urgent sense of drama. Very entertaining. I also felt a bit put out that it didn't cover some parts of Reynolds' children's book, except the few times I read "wind resistance" and a shudder of pleasure rippled through my memories. Yet this is a fine book, and it fills out so much of the Wright brothers' story, more of their sister Katharine, and more of their time in Europe.

And every time I saw that replica of a 1910 Farman at Hong Kong Airport I could have sworn it was a modified Wright Flyer. I didn't know that it was actually Glen Curtiss, along with Alexander Graham Bell, who did a little more of the aeronautical plagiarism, and that the Wrights spent considerable energy in protecting their legacy. Their moral uprightness is evident in McCullough's writing, and the shy, standing on the shoulders of giants for the good of humankind genius of the Brothers Wright rather than greedy profit shines through probably a little too heroically, even for someone who still thinks of the Wright brothers the way he did in the 1970s.

Part of me wanted the book to be more academic, but at the same time it was riveting. It didn't make me regret reading it like part of me still regrets Simon Winchester's Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean. (Although, recently when I gave away a bunch of books to a second-hand bookstore, I rescued Atlantic from the pile because I think I liked it more than I let on.) And how academic could it be? There are pages and pages of references and notes at the back of the book; it is clearly well-researched and the record of the research is detailed enough for any scholar.

It is just that the popular genre leaves me with a sense of the unauthentic. And then I remember my sister remembering me and my fascination with the Wright brothers and I wonder how far one could be objective about these two heroes who did what every boy in history wished he could do, and how the early days of cycling and flying and racing cars were romantic to the point where one could still win the Grand Prix while smoking a cigar and now you can't even buy cigars without breaking the bank because you are not allowed to but the Wrights did it and even though others tried to take it away from them they couldn't and what else could I possibly want in a book?

The more I think about it, the more stars I keep giving it and I shall have to admit that I loved it, just as I did Reynolds' book over forty years ago, and I am reminded of what it is like to work hard and achieve the impossible so why wouldn't it be romantic and nostalgic? It was, it is, and the only thing that upsets me is that Orville neglected his sister Katharine, but thankfully saw her at the last moment and was with her at the end. But that wasn't McCullough's fault. I think it just bothered me more than I can admit, and from what I can remember, Reynolds' never mentioned it. Come to think of it, neither would I to a seven year old boy.

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